Nutty ReligionPeople wonder why I simultaneously enjoy the work of Jack T. Chick and am repelled by the activities of the late Jerry Falwell. For one thing, Chick does not generally want to make his world view the law of the land. Falwell, in contrast, had theocratic plans for America. Also, Chick is a businessman who lives modestly and has paid a high price for his controversial stands. Although I disagree with just about everything Chick writes, I have to at least applaud Chick for sticking to his guns even though his controversial comics were threatening his business. Falwell, on the other hand, is a man of the cloth who has bilked his congregation out of their hard-earned money with expensive and libelous video tapes and other schemes. Most important, unlike Chick, Falwell and other apocalyptic preachers have had the ear of people in the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations. That's scary.

That is not to say that I don’t find much of Falwell’s shtick amusing. It would be more amusing if people didn't take Falwell's apocalyptic views seriously. The other day, I checked out a videotape of Falwell's 1993 sermon, "The Coming Satanic Superman" which deals with the supposed imminent arrival of the Antichrist and the Rapture. What is scary about it that John Hagee is saying the same things to today's audiences. Here are a few of the more revealing excerpts of Falwell's sermon.

I’m expecting the Lord to return in my lifetime. I can’t guarantee that but I’m living that way, with full expectations that I will not need an undertaker. . .

Others affirm that he [the Antichrist] will be a Jew. I think he will be. There are two Old Testament passages and one New Testament passage to indicate that he will be a Jew because he will be counterfeiting the Christ who is a Jew [Falwell cited Ezekiel 21:25; Daniel 11:27; and John 5:43]

According to 1 John 4, the spirit of Antichrist is already at work in the world. Who would ever believe that the National Endowment for the Arts, with our tax dollars, would pay a so-called artist to create a cross with Christ on it and submerge the cross in a container of the artist's human urine? All paid for with our tax dollars? Who would believe that that would happen in America and the President of the United States supports the National Endowment of the Arts [Reminder: this sermon was from 1993 when Bill Clinton was president]. It's that spirit of Antichrist at work here: pornography, the abortion of unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, all of these wicked, vulgar, and blasphemous things are happening right now. The spirit of the Antichrist is at work in the world while we speak. Al Worthington and I were speaking backstage a moment ago about the fact that the majority of us are now being controlled by a vulgar minority. A vulgar minority--maybe five percent of the New Agers and the pornographers and the baby-killers and the Christ-haters--they actually control all of us. They own Hollywood; they own the national media; they own the White House; they own--the majority of them--the Congress.

Don't think, you liberals and New Agers and Antichrist religious people, that you will rise to power on the coat-tails of the Antichrist. You'll push him to power and he'll destroy you.

It blesses my heart to be a premillenarian because I don't have to worry about those crazies in the Middle East getting their hands on the Ukrainian and the Russian nuclear ICBMs and others and destroying the world.

All the heavens and Earth as we know it now will melt with a fervent heat and cease to be. You know what the saints will say? "So what?" Because coming down out of Heaven like a bride adoring for her husband will be the New Jerusalem, the holy city of God, prepared for the saints for all the ages. We'll have new heavens and a new earth, and no more need for this one. We can give it to the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the environmentalists, Al Gore, the tree-huggers, whoever wants it. We don't need it anymore. [Laughter and applause from the congregation]